‘All about defense’: Boise State struggles to score again — but wins again
Whether it’s in AAU youth basketball, the Final Four or the NBA Finals, missing your first 11 shots is going to make it really difficult to win a game.
Opening the second half with another drought while your opponent goes on a 13-0 run makes it even more difficult.
But once in a while, a team manages to defy the odds. That team on Tuesday night was Boise State.
Despite not scoring its first field goal until over 8 minutes into the game, and despite falling behind 32-21 early in the second half, the Broncos managed to defeat equally cold-shooting New Mexico 62-53 at ExtraMile Arena.
Boise State (9-4, 1-1 Mountain West) went just 20-for-56 (35.7%) from the field, but the Lobos (10-3, 1-1) fared worse, ending by making just 20-for-65 (30.8%), including three of their final 15 shots.
New Mexico didn’t start the game nearly as badly as the Broncos, but wasn’t on fire, either. Despite scoring just 7 points in the first 10 minutes of the game, BSU trailed only 11-7.
“Some nights the game of basketball just is like that,” Boise State coach Leon Rice said. “Credit their defense, credit our defense. Both teams did a really nice job defensively.”
The win was Rice’s 169th in the regular season in the Mountain West, surpassing legendary coach Steve Fisher for the most in conference history. Fisher coached San Diego State from 1999 to 2017 after his stint at Michigan, where he won the national championship in 1989.
Boise State came into Tuesday night’s late tipoff assuming it would need to be hot from beyond the arc. The Lobos boast one of the best interior defenses in the Mountain West and have forced opponents this year into taking over half of their shots (51.2%) from beyond the arc.
So when the Broncos missed their first nine three-point attempts, things looked bad. But because the Lobos were not hitting much either, by the time junior forward Drew Fielder sunk the home team’s first field goal of the game — after the 12-minute media timeout — Boise State trailed just 8-5.
Fielder’s 3-pointer finally opened things up for the Broncos, who ended the half on a 19-5 run to take a 21-19 lead.
“It seemed like we got some open looks, but every one of our shots was a three, and some of them were really open,” Rice said. “Not that I don’t want to shoot those, but we seemed like we were a step slow or (taking) the path of least resistance. We were settling.”
By the end of the night, Boise State shot just 6-for-30 (20%) from 3-point range. But with the Lobos shooting just 3-for-25 (12%) from beyond the arc, down from their usual 33.4%, the Broncos got away with it.
The 53 points scored by New Mexico were its lowest point total of the season. Parallel to that, the Broncos’ 62 points tied their lowest output. However, Boise State has also won all three of those games — 62-58 over Montana State and 62-59 over Wichita State were the others.
“It’s all about defense,” said freshman guard AG Neto, who ended the night with 10 points and two defensive rebounds.
“Every team that plays us, they know we’re a good defensive team,” Neto continued. “So we don’t worry about offense if we play good defense.”
New Mexico puts its first-half struggles behind coming out of the break, with a 13-0 run in a little over 3 minutes giving the Lobos a 32-21 lead.
But just as Neto stepped up off the bench to produce a solid 25 minutes of play, it was a fellow freshman, forward Spencer Ahrens, who pulled the Broncos out of the ditch.
Ahrens scored a team-high 12 points, with 10 of those coming in a four-minute stretch early in the second half. Ahrens ended the Lobos’ 13-0 run with a pair of scores before sinking two 3-pointers, the second of which came from deep and charged life back into ExtraMile Arena.
“The team needed a spark, and I’ve been working so hard in practice and stuff, I knew it was going to come,” Ahrens said. “I’m not forcing anything, just letting the game come to me.”
The Broncos took a 42-41 lead a few minutes after Ahrens’ run, thanks to a layup from Neto, and didn’t look back.
The pair of freshmen led an impressive night from a Boise State bench that scored 37 points, more than the 25 the starting five managed. Sophomore forward Pearson Carmichael also chipped in off the bench with 11 points.
“When on the bench, we’re reading the game,” Neto said. “We see what the team needs at the moment we get in. So when I get in the game, I kind of know what the team needs, and the game is easier for us coming off the bench because you can see it from outside.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2025 at 12:55 AM.
